The non-repetition of the elections in Murcia was so announced that it is written in article 13 of the regional electoral law, in force since 2015. It says that "the electoral district will be unique, made up of all the municipalities of the Region." Before, with an extravagance only surpassed by the nonsense of the Canary Islands system, he said that "the number of electoral constituencies will be five." With the old norm it is very likely that with his 42.8% of the votes the popular Fernando López Miras would have already obtained an absolute majority in May. With the current one he was not sure of getting it in October.
There were serious possibilities that with the repetition he would depend again on Vox, so that his position would weaken.
Until 2015, Murcia had one more constituency than Catalonia, with a third of its surface area and a fifth of its population. This electoral partitioning gave the first force a huge bonus, the difference between the percentages of votes and seats.
When in 2015 the PP lost the absolute majority after 20 years, it was able to get it with just 1.4 points more than the 37.4% it obtained. Now, with that single constituency and the electoral barrier reduced from 5 to 3%, it could need 47%. With the best result in recent years, 46.7% of the generals in 2016, would not have it. According to ABC, the polls did not give it to them, although it does not seem that the popular leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, is to trust them very much.
Feijóóo must not have liked the dissolution of the Murcian parliament this week, in the midst of his investiture of impossible airs. And the ultras of Santiago Abascal, despite not being up for much of an electoral party either, had turned the Murcian battle into a Stalingrad of their planetary war against the popular.
But the decisive party for the PP and Vox to have finally agreed on a coalition government was the same one that created the conditions for the blockade to take place, Ciudadanos, the architect of the 2015 electoral reform, in a quick and skilful maneuver. While agreeing to invest the popular Pedro Antonio Sánchez, despite the threat of imputation that would make him resign in 2017, Cs negotiated with the opposition the electoral reform at full speed, to prevent it from getting stuck and the PP forcing new elections without changing the law.
Thus, the now president López Miras remained a prisoner of the orange ghost. Neither he nor he has the majority or the margin to try to achieve it without running an immense risk.
In the historical average until 2015, Murcia had, behind the Canary Islands, the second highest level of electoral disproportionality, the index that measures the distortions that occur when converting votes into seats. In the last electoral cycle, 2020-2023, with the 2015 reform system, Murcia fell eleven places in this ranking, to thirteenth.
The five circumscriptions, of Cartagena. Lorca, Murcia, Northwest and Altiplano, arose from a regional map that did not enter into force. It was always suspected that it was a possible Spanish version of gerrymandering, as the Anglo-Saxons call the manipulation of electoral districts. Faced with the abyss of the 2015 elections, according to the newspaper La Verdad, the PP came to study the creation of two more constituencies, those of Cieza and Mar Menor. The accounts would have turned out if he had managed to overcome the great scandal that would have broken out. He didn't even try, but alerted his rivals that the fight was going to be serious. Three months after the elections the electoral reform was approved. Now Cs has disappeared from Parliament, but the orange ghost is still there.
